Understanding great Danes

Saturday Claire Danes, in HBO’s 8 p.m. true-life movie “Temple Grandin,” plays this special lady whose autism enables her to understand the souls of animals. Having seen her gorgeous emotional performance, I asked about those scenes amid rampaging cows and stomping horses. Said Claire:

“Professional animal handlers assisted me. The cows were docile. There was no real threat. The only time I honestly felt agitated was where I’m lying on the ground in a field surrounded by all these hooves. It required numerous takes, and we were losing the light. That one I was nervous.

“So many people are impervious to the suffering of cows. It was all a bit overwhelming. There’s a scene where they are herded through a chute. When I placed my head into the slot and it squeezed me, I actually felt a calming effect.

“We filmed in Austin, Texas. And my scene in the stall with a rearing angry horse? I was well protected with handlers nearby and the actual horse was quite sedate. He only played unruly for TV.”

Switching from television-savvy horse actors to autism itself: “I’ve met with autistic people. The difficulty was in playing Temple as a teenager when she was still awkward. When she grew into being sophisticated and polished, it was easier. We spent an afternoon together before we filmed. She was idiosyncratic but gracious and open. Once I became more involved in the performance itself, I was less concerned and not at all bothered with looking somewhat unusual. And she was on the set the final two days. Temple has her own incredible style. To see us dressed alike, both standing together in cowboy shirts, was a bit surreal.

“It’s not my usual glamorous role, but I liked being so unadorned. It was great to spend very little time in the makeup chair.

“I’m actually an animal person. I had a champion cat, Kiki, and now I have my Schnauzer mix schnoodle.”

About husband Hugh Dancy not attending HBO’s party for her: “As you know, he opens the 16th in off-Broadway’s ‘The Pride.’ He had a tech rehearsal — but he was with me in spirit.”

BARNEYS in Bev Hills saying Elton John paid $2,100 for one pair of shoes. Blue. Jill Sanders. Triple-stitched . . . And can it be L. DiCaprio gets that hair streaked? At a place called Prive? Off Melrose in LA? . . . And can it be beauteous Juliette Binoche was pumping her own gas for her own pickup in Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood? . . . With J.D. Salinger passing, Hollywood hopes for a shot at a “Catcher in the Rye” film. The reclusive author had refused Kazan, Spielberg and H. Weinstein . . . Feb. 22 whatever Citizens Committee for New York City is honors theater owner Rocco Landesman, Matthew Broderick presides and the “Jersey Boys” will sing . . . The “West Side Story” bunch learned of their Grammy for Best Musical Show Album in the middle of Sunday’s matinee just after George Akram, who plays Bernardo, had been stabbed to death onstage. Talk about reversal of fortune!

LAST year Rip Torn, who studied to be an architect, whose cousin is Sissy Spacek, whose first wife was the glorious Geraldine Page, came to my home. Slightly disheveled, he had so much to say that even if he wasn’t confused then — I was. Like: “I was born Feb. 6, but in my memoir, which I’m now writing in longhand, I’m claiming Feb. 8 because that’s Jimmy Dean Day.” OK. Then: “Bruce Dern was my understudy back when we did ‘Sweet Bird of Youth.’ We didn’t get along because he had a cold and kept breathing in my face.” OK. And, “I’m a fisherman. I still go out for catfish and bass. I built a boat when I was 12. My grandfather taught me to tie minnows to the branch of a tree, and when the branch bent we knew the bass had bit.” OK.

Despite his jumbled lifestyle, I remember him saying clearly how he’d never missed a performance onstage ever. He gift-wrapped the so-called acting mystique as: “Just learn your lines, pick up your cues and don’t bump into the furniture.”

YOU’VE read about last week’s spit swap? Celebrities spat their saliva into a test tube, and geniuses (parked probably in some windowless basement, like in maybe Whoknowswhereville outside downtown Idaho somewhere) dissected its DNAness or genetic whateverness. This classier version of peeing in a cup being to determine which of us — in this “six degrees of separation” concept — might possibly be even distantly remotely related. You’ve probably heard the results but, having been out of the country, I just learned them. I am now semi-reliably informed that my cousin by marriage or stepbrother six times removed or great-uncle on my father’s grandmother’s maternal side makes me share the noble lineage of an Irishman named Regis Philbin.

I am proud to announce this. Or put it this way: I am not totally unproud. I’m sort of semi-almost proud to be kin to Reege. So far, and it grieves me to state this, he, my family member, my true related relation, has yet to state publicly that he is delighted — nay, thrilled — to share my bloodlines. It is enough of a blow to never again ask this one-time choirboy to come to my Passover Seder.

TO celebrate the Bleecker Street The atre’s comedy “Circumcise Me” being extended, Ben’s Deli did a brisket sandwich with brisket, chopped liver and coleslaw. The pickle on the side had its ends cut off. Trust me. I don’t make this stuff up.